1.6 Million people, mostly children, die every year from disease related to unclean water and poor sanitation. Life Force Kiosks, a non-profit operating in Kenya, was formed to help provide clean water to all.

Life Force Kiosks is Live!

It’s with great excitement that I announce that Life Force Kiosks began operations in the Gatwekera village of Kibera today. We launched this morning with an incredibly successful community event. The band and Emcee did a fantastic job of gathering and entertaining crowds of people who sat in our tents and lined the street to hear about Life Force Kiosks.

Photo by Tobin Jones

A community leader opened the meeting with some rousing remarks before handing things over to our General Manager, Steve, who then gave a detailed presentation of our services. I spoke next and outlined some of the key benefits of Life Force Kiosks. I explained how our service offers the unique combination of affordability, convenience, effectiveness, and no impact on taste & smell. I also reiterated the details of our weekly raffle. We had two guest speakers who also made presentations. Professor Karama from the Kenya Medical Research Institute (KEMRI) and Mr. Wanjohi from the Ministry of Public Health and Sanitation (MoPHS) both gave presentations discussing the health benefits of the Life Force Kiosks model. I am extremely thankful that our two guest speakers were able to attend. Showing the community that both KEMRI and the MoPHS support Life Force Kiosks gives us instant credibility and should help accelerate adoption.

After the conclusion of the presentations, the band continued to entertain the community as we passed out more leaflets and gave free samples of Life Force Kiosks treated water. The afternoon was spent setting up the kiosks so we could immediately start selling our services and improving the water quality and storage conditions in Kibera. Over the coming days and months I look forward to giving you regular updates on how things are going. I’ll also be sharing both our success stories and any lessons learned.

In addition to the pictures in this post, I encourage you to check out our Flickr account for additional photos at http://www.flickr.com/photos/33468302@N02/. I’d like to thank Tobin Jones, a good friend and professional photographer who volunteered his time today to take some great pictures. Over the next few days I’ll post additional pictures to the Flickr account and on our website at www.LifeForceKiosks.org.

I want to thank all of you who have been following our story for over a year. But this is just the beginning. The exciting part starts now!